Driven to save American music, Derek Trucks pulls into the Palace Theater

ALBANY -- Watching the American Music Awards on television a few weeks ago left slide guitar hero Derek Trucks feeling depressed.

"There wasn't one ounce of American music," he said with disgust. "It's across the board now. It's the food you eat, it's the music you hear, it's the news you get, the television being thrown at you. There's not a lot of substance there. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a situation where there was a lot of good music around and it was important."

Since the passing of Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1990, Trucks is America's greatest hope for keeping 20th-century roots music in the mass consciousness. He'll play the Palace Theatre Sunday night with his blues-singing wife, Susan Tedeschi, and their 11-piece Tedeschi Trucks Band.

A touring headliner at age 11, Trucks shared lead guitar roles with Warren Haynes for 14 years in The Allman Brothers Band, was the featured soloist on Eric Clapton's 2006 tour and is the youngest guitarist on Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists" list.

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The Tedeschi Trucks Band won a Grammy for their 2011 album, "Revelator," and Trucks and his wife took home so many awards at last year's Blues Music Awards that they prompted another winner to quip, "Thank God Derek Trucks wasn't nominated in my category."

Sunday's concert will be the last 2012 stop on a tour that included eight gigs with co-headliner B.B. King, a three-night stand at New York City's Beacon Theatre and a closing set at this year's Newport Jazz Festival.

Trucks admits that his big band is influenced by such iconic rock groups as Delaney and Bonnie, his namesake Derek and the Dominoes and Sly and the Family Stone. However, he laughs when I say the only element lacking from the Tedeschi Trucks Band is the walking tightrope aspect wrought by mind-altering substances. I can remember soaring with Delaney and Bonnie more than 40 years ago, thinking they were a train wreck ready to happen.

"No, I think we've taken the train wreck element out of it, for the most part," chuckled Trucks, who has fathered two children with Tedeschi and is drug-free and extremely disciplined. "On a rare occasion you'll feel it coming off the tracks, but I definitely think that's the difference. That's kind of the evolution of the thing. I mean, those guys were experimenting with the whole format, with their bodies, with their minds. The traveling rock band -- that whole concept had just been invented when those guys were doing that. So I think we have a lot of time and experience to learn from, and I feel we've definitely taken it in a different direction."

Trucks doesn't look like a rock star. He stands stock still throughout his set.

He also doesn't think like a rock star, admitting, "We always had the sense we were kind of one toe in all the different scenes (blues, jazz, jam band) but were never fully embraced by any of them. I kind of like the band orphan vibe," Trucks said, giggling nervously.

While he does enjoy educating his audience about the history of American music, he has no master plan to conquer the charts.

"I don't know if setting out on a mission like that makes it false, (but) I think you just have to do what you do. Whether it's Duane (Allman) or Stevie Ray or anybody, a lot of it is just time and place," Trucks said. "You were the right guy at the right place at the right time doing the right thing. You know they were students and lovers of music, and they gave their life to it."

Trucks sees a piece of himself in the documentary film "Jiro Dreams of Sushi," about an 85-year-old sushi chef with a restaurant in the Tokyo subway.

"He's gone to work the same way for 70 years, and just watching him go through it every day, and even at his age, just uncompromising -- that's the stuff that's inspiring," he said. "I think in anything you do, you just have to keep your nose to the grindstone."